At the recent PRIMEX East leadership conference by IDEAlliance, Quad/Graphics Chairman, President and CEO Joel Quadracci gave a keynote presentation in which he reviewed the state of the industry, discussed the impact of new technologies, and commented on Quad’s rise to the number two position among all U.S. printing firms.

Patrick Henry, Executive Editor for WhatTheyThink.com is also the director of Liberty or Death Communications, a consultancy specializing in research, education, promotional, and editorial support services for the printing and publishing industries.

Patrick Henry is available for speaking engagements and consulting projects. To get more information contact us here.

Discussion

Excellent overview, I was particularly impressed by the visionary comment -

"The whole digital space for us, as a part of our company, is never going to be bigger than the print side, because of revenue differences. But it’s probably one of the most important things to make the core product very healthy. And then, we’ll continue to migrate where we migrate"

The idea that the industry has been "using big data for years, especially on the publishing and catalog side" seems like he's trying to reassure "the industry" that we aren't that far behind in this new ever changing digital world.

However, the industry has a very limited experiencing with data processing. We have been more of an end point, an output device, being driven by customer's use of data. And, even the most sophisticated print customers have never used the the amounts of data that actual "Big Data" companies are processing and acting upon with digital initiatives, for print applications.

Finally, it concerns me that such an important industry leader thinks "the whole digital space for us, as a part of our company, is never going to be bigger than the print side, because of revenue differences".

Is this a conscious decision not to be a player in Digital, ceding the massive, incredibly fast growing digital space to "startup" companies who can move more quickly? Amazon is mentioned... what use do they have for print, besides packaging materials?